A grinder or honer for finishing or superfinishing an end surface of a cylindrical workpiece can comprise two synchronously driven supporting rollers, a workpiece bracing mechanism behind the supporting rollers, a drive shaft with a grinding tool in front of the supporting roller, and a loading and unloading mechanism.
The blanks to be worked are fed to the grinding station through an admitting shaft, while the finished parts to be processed further are taken from the machine through a discharge shaft.
The cylindrical workpiece usually is composed of steel, and can be a mass produced push rod, which must be manufactured with a high precision.
In the past, the loading and unloading mechanisms have been independent units with coupled independent drives. The loading mechanism serves exclusively for loading. It takes a blank to a position downstream of the feed shaft or to a connected feed conduit where the blank is pressed by a pressing roller of the supporting rollers during grinding while it lies on a workpiece guide mechanism under pressure from the grinding tool. Correspondingly the unloading mechanism operates as it were in reverse sequence when the grinding process ends to takeup the finished part and remove it from the grinding station.
When the loading mechanism is removed and the pressing roller has been raised the unloading mechanism takes the finished part with a suitable structural part and feeds it to the discharge shaft or a discharge passage connected to it. This means that the loading and unloading time can frequently be greater than the grinding time.